Next month will be three years. I’m in an odd place in my grief. I’m not happy with how things are progressing, but there’s nothing really wrong. I generally think I’ve handled my grief well, continuing to function, and getting so very many things completed.

Trying to find the source of my dissatisfaction, I reviewed the five stages of grief to see what might be missing. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.

I believe I moved through the denial stage pretty quickly. I mean, I had a dead body in front of me. There are really no doubts about it.

Anger has been trickier, and longer in coming, and I think it reveals itself in my impatience and intolerance in certain situations. I haven’t felt a need to blame or be angry at anyone or God. I can’t think of anything I could or should have done differently that would have resulted in him not passing away that night. I don’t think I’ve been more short-tempered or impatient than usual. So this one is kind of tough.

Bargaining? What’s to bargain? He isn’t coming back. I’m not sure anyone could have done anything to extend his life. He was usually in tune with his body, and if he didn’t have an idea of what could be done, I don’t think anyone else would have either. Of course, there have been “what if” and “if only” statements, but it was too late by the time I realized there had been a problem.

Depression. Plenty of that. In abundance! But it seems far less intense now. It’s more in maintenance mode.

Acceptance. I’m probably here, and while I’m accepting of it, I would have thought it would be a more…satisfying? … place to be.

In other news, I replaced the gas struts on the Leer topper back window. It’s so nice to have the window stay up when I open it instead of dropping on my head. It was a simple job and took about 5 minutes to complete. I should have done this at least a year ago.

Remember the drain issue from last month? Unsurprisingly, the tree roots from a massive live oak by the driveway have collapsed the drain pipe, and I’ll have to dig up concrete and replace pipe. Part of the plan is to reroute the pipe away from the tree to delay this from happening again. Waiting for an estimate, then I’ll have to find a concrete guy to replace the concrete that gets torn up in the process. I may get an estimate to do a more level driveway on the vacant lot side to make ingress and egress easier for the Brinlee team (and us when we have trailers).

Let’s revisit the anger stage of grief. I do think I’m there now, but it isn’t like I expected it to be. I don’t want to say more here, but I think there’s more to this than I originally thought.

Pictures from our Grand Tour 2015 trip came up in my Facebook memories. This was the trip where Mom presented Alan with his Texas Star quilt in the colors he chose. The second photo represents a lot to me — our companionship, our friendship, our travels together, and the way he always looked out for us.

I’m in a mediocre place right now. I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to be where I’m at right now. I wake up. I go through the motions. I do what needs to be done (mostly — I could do better), but I still haven’t found what my new life is meant to be. (I wanted to type, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for, and I know some of you know that lyric.)

I genuinely believed when I wrote that I would figure out what my new life would be like that I would have some idea by now, almost three years later. I guess it just is.